FreeBSD project turns 26 years old | Hacker News Reader

FreeBSD project turns 26 years old

freebsdfoundation.org

83 pointsvermaden21 comments

The first time I installed FreeBSD was in 1995, setting up a basic internet presence (mail, ftp, http) for the consulting firm I worked for. There was a small ISP on the floor above us, and we ran PPP over a serial cable strung out the window.

Aside from a little exposure to NextStep at school, it was my first unix. I had the impression that FreeBSD was this capital-I Institution - Core has always been so professional and competent that from the outside, it never looked like a newish project. I have no idea how they had such comprehensive documentation and still found the time to write code.

I'm still incredibly impressed with them, love FreeBSD, and have been running it with only minor interruptions ever since. I've not been terribly involved (and not at all now), but it has been a privilege to have lived basically my entire career with such an incredibly competent and helpful group of awesome people building what is IMO the world's best server OS.

Looking forward to another 26!

FreeBSD was my first operating system ever. My dad had a FreeBSD machine in a little closet in his office. He taught me how to navigate with the command line, edit files with emacs, and send email with mutt. Good times. Here’s to 26 years, and many more to come!

Congratulations.

A HD-failure in 1998 gave me the opportunity to try out FreeBSD before re-installing my GNU/Linux work environment on the new HD. After a week it was clear I'm not switching back and ever since I am a FreeBSD user.

I’m sourcing parts for a FreeNAS build which runs on FreeBSD. I’ve never touched FreeBSD but I’m looking forward to learning another *Nix. The supported hardware for FreeBSD/FreeNAS isn’t as great as Linux or Windows and the new C246 server grade parts are proving hard to find.

>In fact, there’s a good chance you’re already using at least some code derived from FreeBSD in your everyday life. For example, ... or play the latest PlayStation 4 game sensation, you’re already using FreeBSD.

Looks like I have indirectly touched FreeBSD with the PS4.

I'm curious, what are the parts you want to use that are not supported by FreeBSD?

Used server raid controllers that need to be flashed into IT mode (FreeNAS requirement) and compatible with FreeBSD. People on the FreeNAS forums had issues with a dell H700 controller that’s common in used hardware, R720 in my case. Some used mobos too.

Not all of the new C246 motherboards by Supermicro have FreeBSD listed as supported. Even boards that only have a small change are not identical, one board adds 4 gigabit ports but isn’t listed under FreeBSD, it will likely work but if any weird issues happen I doubt I’ll get official support.

Guess it won't help you much, but in case others might be interested I've had nothing but smooth sailing with two different LSI SAS boards with FreeNAS.

One is a 9207-8i the other is a 9201-16e. Picked the latter up cheap from eBay, and flashed new firmware on it.

Both come up without doing anything special.

    mps0: <Avago Technologies (LSI) SAS2308> 
    mps0: Firmware: 20.00.02.00, Driver: 21.02.00.00-fbsd
    mps1: <Avago Technologies (LSI) SAS2116> 
    mps1: Firmware: 20.00.07.00, Driver: 21.02.00.00-fbsd

Thanks, the FreeNAS community told me to sell the dell card on eBay and put in an LSI. I’ll save your recommendations.

Using it right now as well as MacOS/Darwin, Linux, Android, Win10.. there is no true and perfect OS, the world consists of multiple interoperable systems made for different use cases. Win10 for SteamVR, Android for mobile and GearVR/Oculus Go/Quest, BSD for networking, MacOS for the polished feeling good programs.. GNU/Linux for an OS desktop

Congratulations!

FreeBSD and OpenBSD were my first non-windows OS I tried out. I think the time was 1999 or 1998. Good memories even though I had not much clue of what I was doing at that time. Still learned a lot, basic unix system administration and such. The FreeBSD documentation is great!

Even learned C because I thought maybe I could contribute code. Unfortunately I never made it to contribute. I regret that very much.

Lot of time spent in my teens on FreeBSD. Though I primarily use MacOS now all those non-GNU command line switches stuck.

I can't tell if you were trying to say this or not, but the default unix utils on macOS and FreeBSD generally share the same (non-GNU) switches/options as macOS's were derived from the BSDs.

I’ll answer for them.

Yes, they were saying that knowing all those BSD/non-GNU options front their BSD days stuck in their mind and are quite useful when working on a Mac today.

It’s better than having to mentally switch between Linux/macOS arguments in your head like many of us have to (like me)!

As others have pointed, there are very little technical reasons to use FreeBSD. Especially since Linux and Docker ate into the virtualization market. If you have a spare machine and are really that curious than by all means. Ports was a fun experience, and FreeBSD overall felt like a steady drop into real unix. Gentoo and Arch follow the same spirit, but were way too hands free for my interest.

I will warn, unless you do have technical reasons, you will unlikely gain anything professionally in a world of Linux servers. Maybe to make use of the most widely used OS under the BSD license. Apple, Nintendo, Sony, and others have proved this.

I'm running a FreeBSD box as my personal file server (have a ZFS pool of WD Red drives).

As a server OS, I've always preferred the BSDs. Unfortunately, due to Docker, BSD is becoming much less relevant for a lot of use cases.

Experimental support:

* https://wiki.freebsd.org/Docker

> Unfortunately, due to Docker, BSD is becoming much less relevant for a lot of use cases.

Same boat. I've recently been testing out running Docker inside a bhyve VM, using plain Debian and NFS for mounting the ZFS datasets in the containers.

Not ideal, quite a lot of overhead, but seems to work for my limited workload for now.

So, kinda torn about where to go from here. I quite like having a NAS that just does its thing and is easy to administrate, but I also really want to be able to run various Docker images...

I personally use a Linux OS and have never used FreeBSD, what's the most convincing reason(s) for making the switch?

It's not a business proposition and its benefits are not driven by user stories.

The reason you would chose it as your platform is if you desire a clean and streamlined Unix environment and experience.

But ZFS native support comes to mind, and supposedly a kick ass network stack for very very high volumes.

And a very permissive license.

And ports software repository is nice, and pkgsrc is also nice.

It is an interesting change of pace, and a somewhat different culture around operating system structure and package management, although definitely part of the same Unixy family.

Sadly these days the business case for using FreeBSD is weaker than ever because Linux has first-class support for Docker and Kubernetes and BSD doesn't. (No, Jails are not a good substitute because Docker is the industry standard and has a lot of third-party support and everyone wants to use it.) However, BSD is an interesting experience for hobbyists.

If you are familiar with Linux, I don't know why you'd want to switch entirely. It might be worth using though, and becoming familiar with. It's all about your use-case. FreeBSD is a great system, and for what it's worth, my favorite aspect is the documentation. It has really comprehensive man-pages compared to Linux.

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